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Where No Man Has Gone Before (Except That One Time)

Warning: this particular blog contains spoilers for the new Star Trek movie, Into Darkness, so if you haven’t seen that yet, look away.

Now, I’ve written about titles before and, although I want
to assure you that we will get to some Trekkie goodness nice and soon, I’d like
to take a moment to discuss this film’s title because God knows lots of other
people have. Or rather a few people have discussed it incessantly, viz. the
bunch of Trekkies and self-appointed Wikipedia guardians (not necessarily the
same people) who zealously guard the film’s Wikipedia page. If there’s one
bunch of folk sadder than hardcore sci-fi fans (of whatever persuasion) it’s
Wikigeeks. Before the film had even previewed, there was a massive flame-war on
the talk page about – get this – whether or not to capitalise the first letter
of ‘Into’. And by ‘massive flame-war’ I mean the best part of 100,000 words
(equivalent to a small novel) of losers arguing, from positions of mutually
incompatible dogma, about something that doesn’t matter in the slightest.

The problem was a colon, or rather the absence thereof. Had
the film followed the conventions of previous movies like Star Trek:
Generations and Star Trek: Nemesis, all would have been sweetness and light.
But JJ Abrams (an undeniably talented film-maker who never met a CGI-added lens
flare he didn’t like) had specifically stated that there was no colon in this
title. Under Wikipedia’s pedantic house rules, a preposition like ‘into’ in a
title is not capitalised unless it is at the start of a sentence or follows a
colon. But ‘Star Trek into Darkness’ would imply that ‘Trek’ is a verb – the
crew are somehow "trekking into darkness” – which plainly isn’t the sense in
which it is meant. The publicity for the film generally split the brace of
two-word phrases over two lines and/or used ALL CAPITALS, thus confounding the
Trekkies’ and Wikigeeks’ attempts to resolve their differences.

To the rest of us, of course, this was just hilarious
(there’s even an XKCD webcomic about it). Furthermore, I was particularly delighted to see that the film’s BBFC certificate goes with the
iconoclastically-hyphenated ‘STAR TREK – INTO DARKNESS’ which may indicate that
the denizens of Soho Square don’t give a monkey’s, or perhaps shows that
they’ve got a sense of humour and are giving the hornets’ nest a bit of a poke.
If so, good for them.

Now, bear in mind that I am not a Trekkie. Or even a
‘Trekker’ (whatever one of those is). I watched the original series on re-runs
in the 1970s. I have seen most (but not all) of the films. I was quite excited
when The Next Generation started and recall going to the house of a friend who
had a contact in the States who sent over bundles of VHS tapes once a month.
There was a regular ‘TNG/Quantum Leap’ evening at this bloke’s house as we all
sat through several imported episodes with cider and pizza, a form of social
bonding that is lost to society now that everyone just downloads shows the
moment they’re broadcast. So I saw most of Next Gen, but certainly not all of
it. I do recall – and this might surprise younger/overseas readers – that the
BBC had an initial policy that it would not screen two Star Trek series at
the same time. So it broadcast the first three seasons of TNG, and indeed the
first episode of Season 4 which was the second half of a two-parter, and then
stopped. Into that same slot it then scheduled the 1960s series including the
infamous four ‘banned episodes’: ‘Miri’ which had been shown once in the UK and
‘Plato’s Stepchildren’, ‘Whom Gods Destroy’ and ‘The Empath’, which had never
been shown here at all.

Then, after broadcasting all of the 1960s episodes, the Beeb
went straight back to Season 4 of Next Gen. Although ironically this modern
incarnation suffered its own censorship in turn with one episode unbroadcast
(‘Higher Ground’, allegedly because of a reference to a fictional Anglo-Irish
unification treaty) and another cut to shreds (‘Shades of Gray’, with almost
the entire last five minutes snipped for being too violent; ironically the
‘unbroadcastable’ footage was shown (out of context) as a flashback in a later
episode). However, despite the above arcane trivia, let me assure you that I am
not now, nor have I ever been, a Trekkie. (No, seriously. Look, in my day being
able to name the four banned Trek episodes was a standard sci-fi trivia
question, like naming all five Planet of the Apes films in the correct order or
knowing what UNCLE stood for.)

I don’t recall watching very much of Deep Space Nine,
although to this day I retain a minor crush on Kyra Neris. I think the only Voyager I watched was the bunch of episodes from which I had to extract VHS
frame grabs for issue 1 of SFX (see blogs passim). And as for Enterprise, I
don’t think I ever got past the pilot. Did anyone? Although the fact that they
cast Scott Bakula suggests that we were somewhat prescient with our TNG/Quantum
Leap double-bills. So no, I’m not a Trekkie.

The above notwithstanding, I believe that the first new Star
Trek film, the one that’s just called Star Trek, the first movie with the new
cast, is - and I do not want you to think I am hyperbolising here - not only
the greatest film ever made but quite possibly the absolute pinnacle of human
cultural achievement, knocking the Sistine Chapel into second place. (Places 3
to 8 are taken up by the Brandenberg Concertos, not necessarily in numerical
order, and after that it all gets a bit confusing...)

I went into that cinema with no preconceptions and very
little advance knowledge (I generally avoid any reviews of movies I intend to
watch). And I was blown away. I thought the casting was spot-on, the design was
fantastic, the script was clever and witty and exciting and paid homage to the
original series without being some slavish fanboy wankfest. Music,
cinematography and of course the special effects - all top notch. I really,
genuinely can’t fault that film. When you consider how many attempts to
recreate on the big screen a pre-existing franchise have fallen desperately
flat - Planet of the Apes and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy spring to
mind, although not before The Phantom Menace - then what JJ Abrams and co managed with Trek was a huge achievement.

I just wish I could be as enthusiastic about the sequel.
It’s not, let me stress, bad. It’s not an embarrassment like the Hitchhiker movie or Burton’s ludicrous Apes nonsense. It’s just disappointing, mainly
because it’s so derivative. Having avoided spoilers in reviews, as is my habit
(and if you generally do likewise then let me give you one final warning to
LOOK THE HELL AWAY RIGHT NOW) I didn’t know that Benedict Cumberbatch’s
character turns out to be Khan Noonian Singh. But the wannabe revelatory line
"My name is Khan” failed to generate any
sense of awe or surprise from this audience member. Just a shrug and then a
realisation that, just two films into the new franchise, they have decided to
start trading on past glories instead of, you know, boldly going where no-one
has gone before.

I’ve already seen Wrath of Khan, thank you. It has already
been made. And one of the reasons that film is so good (establishing the
tradition that the best Trek films were the even-numbered ones) is that it
pleased the fanboys by harking back to ‘Space Seed’ (an original series episode
that was good but not, up to that point, particularly significant) while being
an exciting and original story in its own right for everyone else. But Into
Darkness basically played on the assumption that everyone watching is familiar
with Star Trek II. And they’re not. There’s a whole generation of audience
members - cynically courted with that 12A rating - for whom the name ‘Khan’
means nothing. Young TF Simpson for instance, who is currently nine and a half,
has seen the first Abrams Trek movie on DVD and enjoyed it. (He teases his dad
for being a Trekkie, which I’m not. Yes, I do own some Star Trek action figures
but he’s the one who plays with them.)

My point is that to these neophyte Trek viewers, the film
has little to offer because its key elements simply riff on earlier films.
Particularly ill-advised was the farewell scene between Kirk and Spock (I told
you to LOOK AWAY!) which obviously thought it was being clever by inverting the
climax of Wrath of Khan but actually subsumed whatever emotional impact it
might have had beneath a layer of pointless fanboy self-referentiality. Plus,
back in Wrath of Khan, Kirk was losing a friend and colleague who had stood by
him through several years of dangerous missions. In Into Darkness, Spock and
Kirk have known each other for what, about six months? Possibly the most brazen
lift was the scene of Kirk and Khan being propelled between the two spaceships
which openly admitted, in the preceding dialogue, that it was a lazy retread of
the exciting scene in the immediately previous film when Kirk and co dropped
down through the atmosphere onto a small platform.

Except that I don’t remember the sky-drop scene being so
cavalierly stupid with physics. If these two figures can steer themselves
through the debris field, why do they need to be so accurately aimed in the
first place? More to the point, whatever hits and cracks Kirk’s faceplate would
slow him down so that he could not possibly enter the other ship at the same
time as Khan, and/or veer him off course on a trajectory from which he could
not possibly recover.

And there lies the biggest problem with Into Darkness: a
relentlessly dumb plot which becomes dumber the more one thinks about it. Have
you seen any of those very amusing ‘Everything Wrong with [Film Title]’ videos
on YouTube? While watching Into Darkness I actually found myself mentally
tallying up the stuff that those guys will have to play with. Little things
like the landing party to the Klingon homeworld dressing in plain clothes to
avoid any connection with Star Fleet, but as soon as they set off, Acting
Captain Sulu broadcasts a message to the planet announcing that a Star Fleet
landing party is on the way. Although to be fair, that was pretty much Sulu’s
only line in the entire film. I think the lead singer of Skunk Anansie who
takes Chekov’s seat, a woman with neither name nor character (nor indeed, hair)
has more lines than Sulu.

And why is Chekov not there? Because obviously, if your
Chief Engineer quit just moments before you set sail, you would send the
Helmsman down to run the engine room. So much better than the lazy option of
just promoting your Second Engineer. I could go on. How is the ‘edge of the
Neutral Zone’ just a quick shuttle trip from the Klingon homeworld? How does
Scotty’s shuttle travel the 400,000,000 miles from Earth to Jupiter (in one
day)? Why does Carol Marcus have a completely gratuitous underwear shot (something
which prompted an irate opinion piece from some poncey Telegraph hack who
brilliantly thought the film was called Star Trek: Into the Darkness!). And
perhaps most puzzling of all, why would anyone hide their friends inside bombs?
Isn’t that a bit like Werner von Braun trying to keep his colleagues safe from
the Russian army by secreting them inside unlaunched V2s?

Into Darkness simply fell flat. The next Trek film
(presumably with a new director while JJ does his Star Wars thang) will have to
be a lot better. Which raises the intriguing possibility that in this brave new
world, the good Star Trek films will be the ones with odd numbers.

MJ Simpson has been writing since he
found out which end of a pencil makes a mark. After editing sci-fan
club mags he spent three years on the staff of SFX and helped to launch
Total Film before switching to freelance work for Fangoria, Shivers,
Video Watchdog, DeathRay and other cult movie magazines. He
has a number of scripts in development and has been working on his
third book, a biography of 'Bride of Frankenstein' Elsa Lanchester, for a very long time, but he
promises to have it finished soon (-ish). Mike lives in Leicester
with his wife, Mrs S, and his young son, TF Simpson. By day he edits
the university's website and in the evenings he edits MJSimpson.co.uk.
He should probably get out more.